Reasons For The Compromise Of 1850

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What was the Compromise of 1850? Since "The Missouri Compromise of 1820" the northern states abolished slavery, however in the southern territories it was still legal. The southern and northern states were constantly arguing because of this topic, that 's why " The Compromise of 1850" was created. The Compromise of 1850 consisted of a series of bills that aimed to deal with slavery in the Confederacy. The Compromise made slavery illegal in California and in the District of Columbia, while in New Mexico and Utah the local ruler would have made the big decision. The Fugitive Slave Act was included in the Compromise and stated that any federal official who did not arrest runaway slaves …show more content…

In December 1863 Lincoln announced his Reconstruction Plan and decided that any state who seceded could be readmitted to the Union, but only if they accepted Presidential Decisions about slavery and took an oath of loyalty towards the Constitution. He also declared that once one tenth of voters had taken an oath, the state could elect new representatives to the Congress and begin a new government. The Plan was rejected by the Congress. After Lincoln 's death Vice-President Johnson became the President and was in charge of completing reconstruction. Johnson declared in December 1865 that every state whom agreed with the Thirteenth Amendment against slavery could join the Union. Even if Johnson freed the slaves, he did not do anything at all to help them. Johnson wasn 't in fact against slavery, he didn 't think it was a terrible way to treat people, he freed them just because he thought this would help the economy. He didn 't give them land where they could live and this forced the 'ex-slaves ' to work in farms, sometimes they where treated just as bad as before. The government levied a new poll tax they couldn 't afford and this meant they couldn 't vote anymore. The 'grandfather clause ' was introduced, it stated that any person whose grandfather was a slave didn 't have the right to vote. Through a literacy test they requested that uneducated slaves could vote. "Black codes" were introduced to forbid to black people the right to own a gun. A terrible racist society, called the Ku Klux Klan, was created in 1865 to prevent black people from gaining rights. Eventually, in 1872, the Klan was abolished, but people still belonged to it secretly. 'Sharecropping ', a new agricultural system, made plantation owners divide their properties to allow both black and white people to work the